With the return of its sovereignty to the People's Republic of China (PRC) on 1 July 1997, Hong Kong attained a new political status as a Special Administrative Region. Hong Kong students, under British rule, had long been received de-politicised education, and a sense of belonging to China was limited to the cognitive domain of Chinese history. The ideal of promoting national identity, underpinned in the current civic education curriculum, is proving to be a difficult task. While much literature has documented how curriculum-based educational practices fail to instil students with such an identity, little study has been undertaken to suggest effective alternatives and to examine how they work. This paper reports a study investigating the impact of study trips on developing students' national identity. Through observation and interviews, it takes an in-depth look into students' experience, into how they identify with a Chinese identity. Results indicate that though the study trips help to nurture the cognitive and affective dimensions of national identity, there are limits and possibilities involved. This paper concludes with reminders which teachers should have taken into account when thinking of using co-curricular activities to address the legitimate need of fostering nationalistic education.
[Copyright © Nanyang Technological University & National Institute of Education.]

Though the notion of a mentor or cooperating teacher in initial teacher education has been implemented in other countries for many years (Haberman, 1971; Spillane & Levenson, 1976), it was first attempted in initial primary teacher education in Hong Kong only in 1994. The present study aims to investigate this new attempt by the Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIEd) to foster supporting relationships in teacher education. The paper focuses on the Cooperating Teacher Scheme (CTS) as a learning experience for student-teachers and the different roles of the school, cooperating teachers, and HKIEd lecturers. The study includes a quantitative component and a qualitative component. Eighty schools were selected randomly from a list of 130 schools participating in the Scheme in 1995-96. Four agents, viz. school heads, co-operating teachers, lecturers and student-teachers involved in the CTS were invited to complete a questionnaire and representatives from each category were interviewed. The findings consider student-teachers' learning as well as varying perceptions of the roles of the four agents in the scheme. Based on the findings, implications of the CTS in initial and further teacher education as well as the collaboration between schools and the Institute are drawn.
[Copyright © 1998 Routledge.]

This article argues that the development of civic education in Hong Kong can be divided into three phases chronologically: (1) before 1984: “depoliticization” by the state and the school; (2) 1984-1997: “politicization” of the intended curriculum; and (3) 1997 onwards: “re-depoliticization” of civic education and official confirmation of nationalistic education. In general, for phases one and two, the development is described as moving from de-politicization to politicization, in response to the political development of Hong Kong from a British colony towards the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) of People's Republic of China. The article continues by exploring the third phase in detail with reference to the official document: Learning to Learn: Life-long Learning and Whole-person Development and the official speeches of the Chief Executive, Tung Chee Hwa. A phenomenon of re-depoliticization of civic education is identified, together with a strong upheaval of nationalistic education. This leads civic education “back to square one"—"re-depoliticized”. The article concludes by highlighting that the development of civic education in Hong Kong is a typical example of how civic education reflects the political context of the society.
[Copyright © Nanyang Technological University & National Institute of Education.]

This paper presents a case study of a Hong Kong primary school undergoing curriculum change and the role of the principal in that process. Its justification as a case study rests on the weak existing knowledge base of such studies in Asian settings; the mix of Chinese and Western cultures which characterize Hong Kong; and the principal as an enthusiastic change agent who puts the school at the forefront of restructuring in primary education in Hong Kong. Qualitative methods involving inductive analysis of the case school were employed to address five research questions aimed at eliciting the principal's role in curriculum reform. The findings reveal that many sources of change coalesce to yield multiple innovations that are managed simultaneously; that the principal is primarily an instructional and transformational leader; and that values is placed on staff development through a collaborative culture. While the principal eagerly embraces many of the reforms, most of which emanate from Western (Anglo-American) system below the apparent surface harmony are feelings of tension among the teachers. While they feel means innovation overload, the respect for hierarchy and seniority so characteristic of Chinese culture means that they feel unable to approach the principal. The study thus explores the phenomenon of a Hong Kong Chinese principal adopting 'Western-style' reforms while implementing them in ways reflecting her Chinese culture.
[Copyright © 2001 Routledge.]

This paper provides an analysis of recent educational reforms in Hong Kong that aim to transform the ideological basis of the curriculum, teaching and learning. While the reforms appear compatible with current international developments in higher education and school curriculum—movements, for example, towards standards-based accountability, the development of technological expertise and meeting the needs of diverse learners—major aspects of the reforms appear to contradict one another. The implications of current reforms for teacher education, in particular, are discussed together with issues related to the politicisa-tion of reforms and teacher education pedagogy. The discussion highlights the need for an alternative approach to educating and preparing both new and in-service teachers in Hong Kong to cope with the current and future educational reforms.
[Copyright © Nanyang Technological University & National Institute of Education.]

Despite the wealth of theoretical literature on globalization and global citizenship, empirical studies on the topic are lacking, especially in the context of pedagogical needs in relation to global citizenship education. In order to address this gap, a study was conducted in Hong Kong to investigate the attitudes of university students towards various dimensions of globalization and global citizenship. The initial results indicate that Hong Kong university students are generally quite aware of globalization's impact on the economy and personal consumption choices and that while there is considerable apathy towards international affairs, there is also a great interest in cross-cultural service learning opportunities that is not being met by the available programmes. Moreover, this study finds almost no association between age, gender, and religion and any of the measured dependent variables on attitudes towards globalization and global citizenship, the only exception being the factor of past intercultural experiences, where a significant difference in measured attitudes was found between respondents who had and respondents who had not participated in such experiences before. Explanations of the findings and the implications of findings for policy and future research are discussed.
[Copyright of Asia Pacific Journal of Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02188791.2013.810143]

Much of the previous research concerning student plagiarism has been conducted in Anglo-American settings. The present paper reports a case study of academic staff's perspectives upon student plagiarism at a university in Hong Kong. Based on interviews with 16 instructors, the study focused on the teachers' views and pedagogical practices, including their use of Turnitin. The paper ends by noting certain areas that need to be addressed in tackling student plagiarism and by proposing a few lines of future research.
[Copyright of Asia Pacific Journal of Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02188791.2013.835710]

Evidence from Australia lends support to the "Asian high achieving syndrome" in Chinese-Australian students and "self-deprivation syndrome" in Anglo-Australian students. Applying ethnographic case studies approach for doctoral thesis the author collected data on a longitudinal basis from homes and school of these students. All of these students attended the same school located in a predominantly middle class suburb of Perth Metropolitan area in Western Australia. Chinese-Australian families had settled in Perth from Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong, whereas Anglo-Australian families had been residing in Perth for three generations. Impetus to revisit these students (now young adults with their own families) 10 years later came from an urge to test the validity of the prediction the author had made in the concluding chapter of his doctoral thesis. The author had claimed that "if Anglo-Australian parents keep on dwelling in the era of 1950s and 1960s and do not change their laid-back attitude about education, their children could eventually be under-privileged in their own country". Ten years later, the author undertook a follow-up study on these young adults from six of the eight original families in order to find out their occupational destinations and future aspirations. Data for the follow-up study were collected from these young adults and their parents. These research cases were interviewed twice, each time approximately for two hours and their parents were interviewed once for two to three hours. The purpose of this paper is to report the findings of the follow-up study which reveals a remarkable relationship between the attitude towards schooling and academic performance with their subsequent occupational destination.
[Copyright of Asia Pacific Journal of Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02188791.2013.860010]

This study explores transformations in the cultural identities of a group of pre-service teachers from mainland China during their educational experiences in Hong Kong, and how these transformations subsequently impact their professional identity. Individual and focus group interviews were conducted with 16 cross-border pre-service teachers from a teacher education institution. Findings demonstrate that 1) the participants recast their extant ideologies and cultural beliefs in response to multiple influences in their new context, enabling them to move beyond pre-established teaching values to re-construct their teaching identity; and 2) some participants constructed a bicultural and multilingual identity to gain legitimacy in the host context. The findings indicate that a more supportive context that provides more room for cultural awareness should be co-constructed by local and non-local pre-service teachers, institutions and policy makers. The study extends understanding of the interconnected relations between teacher identity and historical and social discourses.
[Copyright of Asia Pacific Journal of Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02188791.2013.808987]